D'Angelo speaks to Wallace, who tells him he wants to go back to school and get out of the Game. However, Malik "Poot" Carr discovers Wallace has started using cocaine to help him deal with his guilt over Brandon. Freamon gets Sydnor and Prez started on the complex Barksdale money trail, including possible political connections, and they are surprised to find Avon's corporations have been buying up vacant buildings in run-down parts of the city. Greggs and Freamon approach D'Angelo's girlfriend, Shardene Ennis, who works at Orlando's, in the hopes they can turn her into a CI. After Bubbles narrowly avoids a beating whilst stealing a package that turns out to be stepped on, he decides to try to get clean. Avon and Eastside kingpin Proposition Joe Stewart stage an East vs. West basketball game, but when the detail follow Avon afterwards, they get something they never expected. Meanwhile, Omar puts into motion a plan to gain revenge for Brandon's death.

Fun opening with Avon/Stringer paying $20k total to have a ringer added to their yearly game against projects on the other side of the the town. $20k seemed like a lot of money for this, but this episode does 2 other great things to establish Avon's worth.

Scene with D and Wallace was heartbreaking. Clearly Wallace isn't cut out for this kind of work and D sees that. He tells him to get back in school and go to colllege. Things end with D giving Wallance some money to help him out since he hasn't been working. If only D picked up on the fact Wallace is using and will likely burn this money on more drugs.

Lester again and again proves he is the most "real po-lice" on the detail. He broke things down for Sydnor and Prez in such baby steps to help them understand how to trace property back to Avon.

Herc and Carver pullover WeeBey for no reason and take $20k. WeeBey doesn't even put up a fight for this. We later learn just how small $20k is in the grand scheme of things. Avon is easily making $1m a month. It was frustrating when Herc and Carver later get accused of taking 2 stacks of bills. Do I beleive they would do something like this? Yes. But not right after they talked about why they couldn't do it. I knew right away it had to be in the trunk from when the bag ripped.

Stringer is pushing Avon towards a truce with Omar, but Omar clearly doesn't want that. How is he able to just walk into the projects and steal from Avon's men? Do they not have any guns? He just walked up with his shotgun, threatened them while they were behind locked doors with his shotgun, and stood there with his back turned to them. Any one of them could have easily shot him.

I love how Bodie and Herc/Carver are friendemies. They stood there watching the game together and Poot lets slip that Avon is there. Crazy that the cops don't even know who they are looking for. The baseketball game is the other time we learn more about Avon's finances. He is willing to bet $100,000 on a basketball game. Avon getting into the face of the ref was intenese.

Daniels and McNulty were giving each other the death stare when Lester was talking about the political donations that Avon makes.

Pretty sloppy of Omar to go after Avon like that when he didn't have a clean shot. I would have thought he's smart enough to wait. He's the one that said just last episode "If you come at the king, you best not miss".

Kima and Lester have their hooks in Chardine. Smart of Kima to show her the body instead of just a picture. Seems like Chardine is going to flip to their side effortessly.

Bubbles wasn't in the episode at all last week, but he got a couple of good moments this time. At the projects he runs into the guy from AA (Walon my podcast said. They also said he is a country music singer who has a real life battle with addiction). Were they just throwing out free samples of vials? I wasn't sure what was going on.Later Bubbles steals some drugs that turn out to be fake and then asks to stay with someone because he wants to get clean. I don't think it is ever explained who she is, but I am assuming sister. My wife suspected Bubbles is faking it just so he can rob her, but later we see him in the basement possibly starting to go through detox.

Tyler wrote:Stringer is pushing Avon towards a truce with Omar, but Omar clearly doesn't want that. How is he able to just walk into the projects and steal from Avon's men? Do they not have any guns? He just walked up with his shotgun, threatened them while they were behind locked doors with his shotgun, and stood there with his back turned to them. Any one of them could have easily shot him.

Evidently, you are missing the statements Omar has been making and will continue to make, about his ruthlessness and reputation. It is known throughout the whole city that you do not mess with Omar. When Omar speaks about his rep, he's not lying, you can take him at his word. When he says he will do something, he will do it. You best believe that.

Tyler wrote:Bubbles wasn't in the episode at all last week, but he got a couple of good moments this time. At the projects he runs into the guy from AA (Walon my podcast said. They also said he is a country music singer who has a real life battle with addiction). Were they just throwing out free samples of vials? I wasn't sure what was going on.Later Bubbles steals some drugs that turn out to be fake and then asks to stay with someone because he wants to get clean. I don't think it is ever explained who she is, but I am assuming sister. My wife suspected Bubbles is faking it just so he can rob her, but later we see him in the basement possibly starting to go through detox.

Bubbles has a love/hate relationship with drugs as this point. The AA guy (Waylon) is talking about hitting rock bottom during his talks. Bubbles is getting close but hasn't hit the bottom. You'll learn later that who you suspect is his sister, is. They have a long history with Bubble's drug addiction. Bubbles is one of those types of people who you root for to turn their life around but everytime they seem like they are on the path, they hit a wall.

purple_hayes wrote:Source of the post Evidently, you are missing the statements Omar has been making and will continue to make, about his ruthlessness and reputation. It is known throughout the whole city that you do not mess with Omar. When Omar speaks about his rep, he's not lying, you can take him at his word. When he says he will do something, he will do it. You best believe that.

The scene displayed this by having people yell "Omar's coming" and all of them running and hiding. But...he had his back turned to you. If you had a gun you could have taken him out and there would be no more threat.

purple_hayes wrote:Source of the post Evidently, you are missing the statements Omar has been making and will continue to make, about his ruthlessness and reputation. It is known throughout the whole city that you do not mess with Omar. When Omar speaks about his rep, he's not lying, you can take him at his word. When he says he will do something, he will do it. You best believe that.

The scene displayed this by having people yell "Omar's coming" and all of them running and hiding. But...he had his back turned to you. If you had a gun you could have taken him out and there would be no more threat.

In conversations with Bump, Kima, McNulty and anyone else who will listen, Omar preaches about his reputation through out the land, you best believe that. Its known he is always armed, he robs the stash house, and you don't mess with him. He has own personal Robin Hood code that he lives by on the streets. You do not f*ck with Omar, best believe that.

Omar is pretty much the only character on the show that isn't constrained in some way by rules imposed by an external order or system. McNulty and D'Angelo try to buck the rules of the organizations they operate under but they are still ultimately bound by them. So I think Omar is even kind of exempt of some of the writer's usual rules about keeping things fairly staid and realistic... he's allowed to be a bit larger than life, even if it somewhat strains credulity at times. He's the exception that proves the rule.

Or by way of a more practical explanation for why he's able to get away with some of the stuff he does, it's like he said to the police in an earlier episode -- when your rep reaches a certain point, your name itself becomes a kind of weapon. Your typical corner boy doesn't understand how Omar has been able to make a career out of robbing drug dealers for years and not end up dead so he looks larger than life to them as well. If he looks vulnerable but he's not acting vulnerable then when it's Omar the instinct probably is to back down.

Also, he robbed that stash during the street ball game when most of the crews were on vacation, so muscle on the stash was probably lighter than usual. The guy guarding the stash house said they had a MAC-10 but Omar expressed doubt and even called the guy by name, suggesting he'd done his homework as usual. Maybe when Omar says "I thinks not," maybe he's saying that the guard doesn't have the guts to use the weapon, or maybe he's saying that he knows he's lying about the gun. Maybe the guard is unarmed (which seems a bit unlikely) or maybe that he has a less threatening weapon -- Omar was visibly wearing a vest. So the question would be, do you want to chance it? How confident are you that you could score a crippling shot before the legendary Omar gets off his own lethal shot? How confident are you that Omar doesn't have someone backing him up who will pop you as soon as you stick your head out?

Herc and Carver pullover WeeBey for no reason and take $20k. WeeBey doesn't even put up a fight for this. We later learn just how small $20k is in the grand scheme of things. Avon is easily making $1m a month. It was frustrating when Herc and Carver later get accused of taking 2 stacks of bills. Do I beleive they would do something like this? Yes. But not right after they talked about why they couldn't do it. I knew right away it had to be in the trunk from when the bag ripped.

It wasn't really for no reason. I think they were hoping to catch him with drugs (a re-up) like they did with Stinkum earlier, so they'd have a charge on him. The money wasn't as good but at least they got to keep it this time, and the way the money was labeled, etc. would help make the conspiracy case. The smarter detectives on the detail seem pretty pleased with the bust so it probably wasn't a major blunder -- though of course, any time they make a move like this (or like trying to follow Avon in the cars) there's a chance they'll get spooked and change things up. But then they can't just not make any moves either. It's definitely a balancing act.

Also there's the issue of allocation of manpower. Because Daniels insisted on trying to follow Avon, for example, nobody was monitoring a payphone that made a re-up order that McNulty evidently thinks was important. McNulty falsified the log (another corner cut with regard to probable cause... they did something similar earlier in the episode when McNulty took note of what Poot said about Wallace after his phone sex) so it seems like they'll still work that lead, but if they were doing things legit, Daniels's decision might have cost them that opportunity.

Pretty sloppy of Omar to go after Avon like that when he didn't have a clean shot. I would have thought he's smart enough to wait. He's the one that said just last episode "If you come at the king, you best not miss"

My impression always was that he waited too long. I guess he needed to wait long enough to page Avon that it'd be plausible that Wee-Bey would have a reason and opportunity to fire off a page to Avon, but IIRC Omar's manner seems pretty leisurely until the point where Wee-Bey shows back up (at which point Omar had to make his move quickly).

Were they just throwing out free samples of vials? I wasn't sure what was going on.

Yeah, "testers" they call them... a curious bit of street-level marketing. You may have also heard the dealers refer to "touts" every now and then, which are addicts who are regularly given free product to "tout" its quality to other fiends.